


A Lot of Therapy Time

by RedsRightHand



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:53:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26392210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedsRightHand/pseuds/RedsRightHand
Summary: "So you're freaking out too?""...a lot of therapy time."A look at Erica's budding feelings for Callie through the lens of her therapy sessions with Dr. Wyatt
Relationships: Erica Hahn/Callie Torres
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve shipped Callica since they first emerged as a couple in season 4 and here I am, 10+ years later, still more than a little sour about the way they wrote (or rather, didn't write) Erica off the show. I've been thinking about rewriting their story in a way that remained more or less true to the show but with more nuance/context (and a happier ending) for years now. Not sure who will actually end up reading this, but I'm sure there are at least a couple of people out there like me who are always on the hunt for new Callica fic. This one is for you!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set at the beginning of 04x15, as an extension of the scene where Meredith walks in on Erica in Dr. Wyatt's office

Erica Hahn usually spends her Tuesday mornings before rounds doing sunrise yoga and grabbing coffee with the spellbindingly beautiful orthopedic surgeon Callie Torres. This particular Tuesday, however, finds her sitting on the couch in the hospital therapist’s office, arms crossed defensively across her chest, wondering for the hundredth time why the hell she is even here.

The therapist, a Dr. Katharine Wyatt, peers at her curiously from across her desk. “So you’re, let’s see, Dr. Erica Hahn?” she asks, glancing down at the file in front of her. Erica nods, wondering just how much this woman has heard about her through the Seattle Grace grapevine. She knows that her reputation has a tendency to precede her.

“Nice to meet you, Erica,” Dr. Wyatt begins. "What br-" A sudden pounding at the door cuts off the rest of her question. She quickly excuses herself and rises to open it as Erica sits and stares vacantly at the floor. She distantly registers Dr. Wyatt telling the person on the other side to make an appointment, followed by the shuffle of shoes making their way back into the room, when all of a sudden there’s a loud bang and Erica looks up just in time to see a clearly frazzled Meredith Grey burst into the room. "You know—" Meredith starts to say, dropping off mid-sentence when she notices there's a patient in the room, and then freezing completely upon realizing who it is. On another day Erica might have found this amusing, but she doesn't have the patience for residents’ shenanigans today. “Make an appointment, Grey. It’s what we do,” she snaps. The glare Dr. Wyatt gives Meredith as she sheepishly backs out of the room is not lost on Erica, and she almost smiles even as she inwardly curses, knowing this is definitely going to make its way back to Yang, who undoubtedly will see it as nothing less than her civic duty to spread it all over the hospital that Erica Hahn, ice queen extraordinaire, is in therapy. And then Callie will find out and demand to know what's going on and—

"As I was saying," Dr. Wyatt says, snapping Erica out of her rapidly spiraling thoughts. "What brings you here today?"

Erica lets out a sigh. “Well, I’ve been having some complicated...feelings lately that I just can't seem to make any sense of," she says, her disdain for the entire concept of _feelings_ plainly evident in her voice.

Dr. Wyatt nods. “Okay, then why don't you start by describing these feelings? Paint me a picture of what's going on.”

“Well, I’ve made a friend here at work. Which is not something I normally do. But apparently no one is immune from falling into the Seattle Grace social cesspool," Erica says dryly.

Dr. Wyatt regards her thoughtfully. “Why is that? That you don’t make friends at work?”

Erica shrugs. “I like to keep my private life private. From everyone. In order to do my job, I have to leave who I am outside the doors of this hospital.”

“But you say you’ve made a new friend here recently?” Dr. Wyatt asks.

“Yeah, Callie Torres. Orthopedic surgeon, I’m sure you’ve heard of her. Like I said, social cesspool. Uh, she and I, well, I don't know, it just happened, really. We had a bad day in the OR and afterwards I asked her and Mark — Sloan, there’s no way you can work here and not know who he is — if they wanted to get a drink. I don't even know where it came from. But then we got to drinking and playing darts and somehow she and I...bonded, I guess you could say, and we’ve been spending pretty much all of our free time together ever since.”

“That must have been a big adjustment for you, letting your guard down and letting a coworker into your personal life,” says Dr. Wyatt, clicking her pen and scribbling something onto the paper in front of her.

“The weird thing, though, is that it really wasn’t. I mean, we’re so different and yet it’s all been so — natural. We just clicked. I’ve never really had a best friend, but I guess that’s what I’d call her.” Erica stops, surprised by what she’s just said. She hadn't realized that was true up until it came out of her mouth.

“So what's making it complicated?” questions Dr. Wyatt. 

Erica lets out a hollow laugh. “Oh God, where do I even begin? I guess it started with Addison — you must know who she is, seeing as Meredith Grey is a patient of yours. She was here for a surgery a couple of weeks ago, so Callie introduced us and took us for drinks at Joe’s on her last night in town. I don't know what was with Callie that night but she was acting so...bizarre. Like, she wouldn't look me in the eye and kept exchanging these weird looks with Addison. And then Mark came over and Callie immediately got up to go dance with him. Not that I’d call what they were doing dancing—it was more like a mating ritual, really. The crazy thing was that she kept glancing over at me and Addison the whole time, like she was afraid we were going to go over and steal Mark from her or something. As if." She almost snorts at the thought. "Anyway," she continues, "she practically dragged him out of there, and then I didn't hear from her for a couple of days, which is pretty unusual. Of course we eventually crossed paths at work, and that’s when it became pretty obvious that she was avoiding me. I thought it had something to do with her not wanting to tell me about her thing with Sloan, and that really bothered me 'cos we tell each other everything, you know? So anyway, I finally managed to catch her alone in the scrub room and just...spoke girl to her. That's Cristina Yang for 'tell her how you feel',” she adds in response to Dr. Wyatt's raised brow.

"And, what did you say to her about how you felt?" the therapist asks. 

“Well, I said that I don’t make friends easily. That I’m awkward and bad at small talk, and I generally don’t like people I don’t know, but that somehow I had made friends with her, only to have her disappear on me with her ‘thing’. Which of course made her think I was mad that she was sleeping with Sloan.”

“And were you? Mad that she was sleeping with Sloan?” 

“No. Yes? I don’t know. What I said to her was that no, I was mad at her for not telling me she was sleeping with Sloan." She sighs. "But if I’m being honest, no, I don’t feel good about the fact that she’s sleeping with Sloan.”

The doctor makes another note. “Why do you think that is?” 

Erica makes a face. “Well, he’s basically a whore, so I don’t really see how there’s any way this can end well. Callie’s divorce really took something from her. I don’t want to see her getting hurt again.”

“It seems like you really care about her,” Dr. Wyatt says. 

Erica nods wordlessly. She couldn't deny it even if she wanted to. Lord knows she wants to. 

“So, you told her that you were upset, and then...?" Dr. Wyatt prompts. 

“So the next night at Joe’s, she comes up to me and tells me that okay, yes, she’s been avoiding me, but no, it didn’t have anything to do with Mark, that it was actually something Addison said to her when she was visiting." Erica hesitates, suddenly finding herself reluctant to say the next part aloud. _Well hell, this is what I'm here to talk about, isn't it?_ she thinks, and decides she’s come too far to chicken out now. "Apparently....Addison asked her if we were a couple, said we seemed like a really happy couple, and I guess that kinda freaked her out.”

Dr. Wyatt doesn't so much as blink at that, much to Erica's relief. “What did you think when she told you that?” she asks matter-of-factly.

“My first thought was just, what a ridiculous idea. So I started laughing, and then she started laughing, and then there was this awkward silence and then she said she had to go, which was clearly code for ‘I’m going to go find Mark and fuck him senseless’. And somehow that just made me feel so...empty inside." She winces at the memory of the raw aching feeling that had settled inside her after Callie had left the bar. She has no intention of telling Dr. Wyatt (or anyone else, for that matter) about what happened after that — about how, after drinking so much she could barely see straight, she had spotted a dermatology intern about half her age eyeing her from across the bar and decided she'd prove that two could play at Callie’s game by taking him back to the hospital and finding an on-call room where she would fuck him in the absolute most indiscrete way possible. They had made it as far as the hospital parking lot before quite literally stumbling into Nurse Rose, who took one look at the state Erica was in and promptly shut the whole thing down, coaxing Erica into her own car instead. Cringing, she remembers the drunk-sobbing that ensued, followed by a rambling yet surgically precise narration of exactly what she would do to the woman if she ever breathed a word of this to anyone. Funny enough, she isn’t actually worried about that happening — Rose is probably the most professional of the surgical staff at Seattle Grace, although she knows that’s exactly not saying much — but what if it had been someone else she'd run into in the parking lot that night, like one of the Yang Gang? She'll never admit it to anyone, but that's the real reason she's here in Dr. Wyatt's office now. She's clearly not in her right mind, and she'll be damned if she lets her severe lack of judgement at crossing her own carefully built professional boundaries ruin the reputation she has worked so doggedly all these years to build. 

Despite having said none of this out loud, Dr. Wyatt seems to sense the emotional storm raging within her. The look the doctor gives her is full of such genuine compassion that she almost feels like breaking down again the way she did that night with Rose. “What's on your mind, Erica?" Dr. Wyatt asks gently. 

“I just—this isn't me! I’m not someone who gets this worked up over this kind of personal relationship. Hell, I’ve hardly ever even had the time for personal relationships period since I spend most of my time at work, where I have always kept my personal life completely off limits. But then Callie had to come along and blur all the lines, and now she’s got this stupid idea about us being a couple planted in my head and I'm just...so freaking confused. "

“What’s there to be confused about?”

“Why would she be so awkward about this? Why do I feel so awkward about this? And why can’t I talk to my best friend about it? Oh that's right, it's because she's off somewhere fucking Mark. Sloan." She wipes away an angry tear as she becomes aware of a beeping coming from inside her lab coat. She fumbles around in her pocket for her pager. "Oh, looks like there's a trauma coming into the ER. Sorry, I, um, have to go, but...same time on Friday right?"

"Yes, see you Friday," Dr. Wyatt responds.

"Okay," Erica says, standing up to leave. "See you then.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set between the elevator kiss at the end of 04x15 and the big surgery on cement boy in 04x17

Friday morning, Erica marches into Dr. Wyatt's office, plops down on the couch, and begins without preamble: "I did something really, really stupid last night. I kissed Callie. In an elevator. In front of Sloan, of all people."

Dr. Wyatt raises an eyebrow. "I think I'm going to need some context for that."

“Right.” Erica takes a deep breath and reaches into the tangle of thoughts swirling through her mind, searching for something, anything, that might coherently explain the sheer madness she seems to have fallen into. "So, um, it seemed like things with Callie were starting to get back to normal, right, until yesterday at lunch when I had to go and make this incredibly stupid remark in front of Sloan about how we were going to share a sapphic salad, and then, well, everything kind of just escalated from there."

Dr. Wyatt nods, indicating that she's with Erica so far. "Okay. Let's start with your remark about the, uh, sapphic salad. How did she react to that?"

Erica is silent for a moment as she considers just how much she ought to say here. She's reluctant to say anything at all—she's too private a person and the grisly details of the situation far too embarrassing to admit out loud to the near-stranger sitting before her—but at the same time, she can’t help but feel she is far too out of control to work through this on her own in the way she normally would. She decides she’ll talk, but she can't quite seem to bring herself to look directly at Dr. Wyatt as she does. Instead, she grabs one of the pillows from the couch next to her and clutches it tightly to her, mumbling into it while she speaks.  


"Well, uh, surprisingly enough she just went with it, told Sloan we're lovers now, and I thought it was going to end there, really, but then she decided to bring him into it, and suddenly it's not about her and me anymore, it's about the three of us and a video camera. At first I thought she was just trying to titillate Mark since he's turned over a new leaf or whatever, but now that I think about it, it's almost like she was actually into the idea. I mean, it was all of about five seconds before she ran off to do him in the on call room, and then when we ran into him in the elevator later, she was right back at it, going on about how he'd been thinking about a threesome all day. And ugh, he had the smuggest smirk on his face, as if he actually thinks he's smooth enough to get the two of us into bed with him. I couldn’t help myself—I told him point blank that he wouldn't be able to handle the two of us, and then, I don't know, it kind of just turned into a pissing contest from there, him saying that he could but wouldn't, me saying he'd find it intimidating, him denying it. And then, oh man, I just wanted to wipe that smirk off his face so badly, to show him exactly how far Callie and I could get without him in bed, and, uh, well, let’s just say my body caught up with me before my brain did, because the next thing I know, I’m leaning over and kissing her—like, a full-on hands on her face, tongue sliding into her mouth kind of kiss. I guess my brain must have shorted out on me at that point, because I barely remember pulling away and getting off the elevator. I think I may have gotten in one last dig at Sloan before I did, but honestly, I don’t even care whether I ended up getting his goat or not because I felt her react to that kiss. Hell, for a second there I really thought she might follow me off the elevator, but of course she didn't, which means she must have gone off with Sloan, surprise surprise. Ugh. I'm such an idiot. Not just for kissing her...for going and opening that whole can of worms in the first place."

Dr. Wyatt leans back in her chair, seemingly nonplussed. "So why did you open that can of worms?” she asks.

Erica sighs. “I guess I was just testing the waters, to see if it was okay to joke about her and me being together. 'Cos if we could joke about it, we might be able to talk about it, you know? But now I wish I hadn't said anything at all. 'Cos then nobody would have started talking about threesomes, I wouldn't have ended up kissing Callie in an elevator in some sort of caveman attempt to one-up Sloan, and I never would have had to find out just how devastating it would be to see her go running back to him. And now everything would be just hunky dorey.”

This time, the therapist manages to catch Erica’s eye and holds her gaze. ”Do you really believe things would be fine if none of that had ever happened, Erica? Would you be any closer to figuring out where the two out you stand than you are now?"

Erica looks away, unable to sustain the eye contact. "Well...no, probably not. Honestly I'm even more confused now than I was before. I don’t know whether whatever it is she's feeling is actually for me or whether she’s just looking for a way to spice up her sex life with Sloan. The worst part is, if she had asked me to join them in that moment, I probably would have said yes." She puts her head in her hands and groans. "How fucked up is that?”

Dr. Wyatt shrugs. “I don't think there's any right or wrong way to feel here. You're not the first lesbian to find yourself in this kind of a situation."

At that, Erica straightens up. "L-lesbian?" she splutters. "No, I'm, I'm not—look, I've never been with a woman before. I've never even wanted to be with a woman before. I'm not gay. Nobody in this situation is gay."

"My apologies, I shouldn't have assumed," Dr. Wyatt says. "But I am. Gay, that is," she adds. 

Erica just stares at her. "Excuse me?"

Dr. Wyatt shifts in her chair. "Well, you said nobody in the situation. I may not be part of this situation, per se, but I am privy to it."

"Okay..." Erica says slowly. "And what the hell does that have to do with anything?"

"It means that this is a safe place for you to work through your feelings about the situation, whatever they may be," Dr. Wyatt replies. "Anyway, you say you've never wanted to be with a woman. Do you want to be with Callie?"  


Erica nods. "I can’t believe I’m saying this, but yes, dammit, I do. All I can think about is how soft she was and just how... _Callie_ she tasted and how much I want to feel her lips again. And oh, I wish that was where it stopped. All this threesome talk has got me so hot and bothered, except instead of wanting it to be Mark touching me I wish it could be Callie. Oh my God. Does that make me gay?"

Dr. Wyatt gives her a small smile. "Not necessarily. You're allowed to have feelings and desires without having to put a label on it one way or another. Have you had a chance to speak to Callie yet today?”

Erica shakes her head. “There was a big trauma that we both got called onto this morning. I said hi, acted like everything was normal, but judging by the flustered 'hi, hello, Erica' response I got from her , I'd say nothing between us is ever going to be truly normal again. And did I mention we're going to have to spend nine hours together in surgery later today? I just...ugh, I wish I knew where things go from here.”

“Where do you want them to go?” Dr. Wyatt asks matter-of-factly.

Erica shrugs, her shoulders sagging. “I don’t know. I don't want to lose her friendship, but I  don’t think I can keep going on like this. I guess I just—I just need to know where we stand. Anyway,” she says, glancing at her watch, “I have to go prepare for said surgery. Thanks for listening to all of...this. See you again Tuesday?”

Dr. Wyatt nods and Erica stands up, sweeping out of the office as abruptly as she came in. 


End file.
